1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to an agricultural implentation for excavating and planting shrubs, trees or other agricultural commodities, and, more importantly, pertains to an articulated tree planter with a telescoping boom for transplanting trees and the like including the tree and accompanying roots with soil adhering thereto. The tree planter includes a four-spade digger including a telescoping boom having all axial and radial degrees of freedom.
2. Description of Prior Art
Prior art tree planters have failed to have any versatility such as freedom of movement of the boom, especially supporting a digger having the four spades and reciprocal gates which exhibits all degrees of movement.
The prior art truck-mounted booms have failed to have any versatility in that the boom only tilted around one vertical pivot point at the end of a truck chassis and with extremely limited height as determined by the tail end chassis height off the ground.
The prior art digger including the spades could be pivoted about an axis on the chassis tail end but failed to provide any axial side movement, any radial roll sideway movement, or any other angular movement of the digger for positioning the digger including a root ball of agricultural roots such as tree roots with encompassing dirt attached thereto at a predetermined spot except by continuously jerking the truck to desired location.
To properly position the digger into a pre-dug hole, whether the pre-dug hole was dug by hand, with another device, or with the tree digger itself, it was necessary for the operator of the truck with the digger to maneuver the truck so as to exactly position the digger holding the root ball directly above the hole. Then, and only then, could the digger including the spades as a unit be dropped down into the hole thereby releasing the tree from the captivity of the spades of the digger once each spade was retracted.
Another prior art problem of tree diggers was that it was first necessary to dig a hole for the tree or agricultural product before the truck arrived with the product within the confines of the spades of the digger. Usually this entailed the truck with the tree digger first going out to the location, digging the hole and positioning the dirt from the hole wherever it was convenient such as on another part of the property. In the alternative, after the hole was dug, the truck would carry the dirt to the nursery or wherever the tree was picked up; then the operator of the truck would excavate the tree or agricultural product from a nursery location; then finally return to the original dug hole and plant the tree or agricultural product into the hole.
A further particular problem with the prior art tree diggers was that it was only possible to dig and plant one tree at a time, requiring at least one trip if not more commonly two trips to the site of planting of the tree or agricultural product. As the case at hand would always have it, the nursery or point of picking up of the tree would always be inconveniently located at a considerable distance from the point of planting the tree, thereby requiring a considerable expenditure not only of time but also of precious fuel to traverse between the two points. This also resulted in least and diminished profits derived due to the lengthy expenditure of time traversing between two points.
The prior art tree diggers have also failed to lift high enough to load trees or agricultural products onto a trailer in addition to lacking all degrees of freedom. The boom supporting the digger lacked versatility, did not extend or telescope, and lacked any degrees of freedom on the tree planter thereby preventing use of the tree transporting trailer.
The present invention overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art by providing a tree planter-digger for trees and agricultural products having all degrees of axial and radial freedom, high lift, and a telescoping, extendable boom. The tree planter is particularly useful for planting of mature trees. The present invention also includes a spade vibrator for vibrating each spade during the digging process. The present invention further includes a hydraulic linkage for raising of each spade blade in a substantially parallel plane with minimal arcuate movement for working in close quarters.